User blog:Deadcoder/Deadcoder's Reviews: Marabounta
I have returned. Some of you have probably thought that I have abandoned this blog. Well, I haven't. I just have actual stuff to do. I work on this wiki, I'm employed full time, and I maintain a McMansion that we live in because my mom designed the house with no concept of maintainability. To celebrate the absurdity that is real life, let's celebrate the absurdity that is Marabounta. This will be rated on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being Betty White's sex tape, and 10 being Diego Mestanza's. I'm pretty sure Diego's doesn't, because I would have found it by now if it did. =The Review= This has Bruno Regeste. That means it will look pretty but have shitty actual plot. Oh wait, Sophie Decroisette is here! That means the writing will actually be good! We start off with Mrs. Hertz's class introducing the concept of the week, because the writers think that Aelita has time traveled into season 1. We learn that Ants are rely on groupthink, with each member being dumb and disposable, but sheer absurd population being able to handle what they encounter. This is also how the catholic church works. Sissi then drops the name of the theme song, with the joke being ruined in the English translation, and reminding us of her ignorance caused by the RTTPs. Jeremie then has an autistic moment looking at the ants "Don't worry, I have Asperger's Syndrome, so I can make that joke". After copypasted dialog from Season 1 between Ulrich and Odd, Jeremie reveals that he was able to a little of decipher Franz Hopper's notes. Jeremie's explanation of multiagent systems is relatively accurate to computer science. This will never happen again. All of the warriors leave for various reasons, with Sissi looking at Ulrich's butt as he walks by. Sissi, find a better man. Or a better woman, etc. Not judging. My point is that you can do better than somebody who treats you like crap. Do better Sissi. While the attack of the week music plays, Jeremie programs while magazines are on the floor about ants. This is one of those moments where the series would go a lot smoother if the characters could hear the soundtrack. At the pool we see William shirtless. I'm going to skip the depraved descriptions of pleasure because this review is already going to be too long. Ulrich muscles his way to the diving board "I can already tell this is going to go poorly". Sissi wears a bikini that looks like she mugged a stripper in candyland, while Nicholas shows less leg than usual, and Herb wears the bottom half of a two piece swim suit from those old ladies that reveal way too much and go to Florida's beaches or Florida's Walmarts. Sissi moans in pleasure "not joking, that's in the episode", and Ulrich's towel mysteriously disappears. Ulrich then fails diving forever. Yumi is being lazy, and has William, who is already in the water, rescue Ulrich, we then have a cliche-ridden CPR fanservice scene that Jim deconstructs by actually doing his job. Herb's glasses mysteriously reappear for a shot, and Emmanuel Maillard, AKA, prototype William, is in the background. This proves that the school won't notice two Williams, thus probably wouldn't notice 3, and therefore, there was no excuse for killing the clone. Ulrich then has a tantrum that will serve as a B plot of sorts, if we redefine "plot" to mean "reason we want a main character to die". Jeremie's A plot shows a simple virtualization job, and we see why Code Lyoko prefers to keep the digital sea out of frame: Bad ability to render liquids well. A sentient tar ball starts to destroy nature. I hope it starts singing like Tim Curry! Jeremie calls Odd, asks him to get Aelita, and rescues Odd from Ulrich's angst B plot. At the factory, Jeremie reveals that he's created the Marabounta. Aeltia then asks what they should do if there's a bug in the program. Jeremie says this isn't a problem because Franz Hopper was a genius. Even smart people screw up, Jeremie. For example: Ben Franklin should have committed seppuku for the idea of Daylight savings time. "This was before Franz Hopper was revealed to be nuttier than G.W. Carver creating a cult of squirrels." Jeremie says he'll pull the plug if anything goes wrong. I'm just going to guess that republicans will force him to carry the mistake to term. Aelita can see the shitstorm brewing, but ignores it because she trusts Jeremie, and She and Odd go to Lyoko via recycled footage from New Order. They then see a Krab running like the po-po have shown up. We then have a pointless yet wonderful scene. William and Sissi talk about their respective uninterested love interests. Contrary to what you'd expect, they're not conspiring. Just revealing. William reveals that he's more than infatuated with Yumi. Sissi, in a very revealing moment, reveals that she's not into cheap magazine romance. She has loved Ulrich for years. Both reveal what we already knew, but in a weird intimate way. THIS IS WHY THIS SERIES SUCCEEDED: GOOD CHARACTER MOMENTS! The season 2 virtualization music brings us back to the A plot. We see the animation being actually pretty amazing. Aelita shows what's going on to Jeremie. Aelita gets a bad feeling and wants to come in. It's almost as if she's seen something like this before: a multiagent system created by a crazy guy she loves that becomes a massive safety threat to everyone. But where could she have seen that? The dramatic music reveals that the Marabounta wants Aelita dead. Somebody should have just told the Marabounta to just wait an episode. Naturally, the Marabounta has spread absurdly. I'm not going to make a cheap joke about the spread of abrahamic religion, but I probably should. The Marabounta won't die, I have yet another Franz Hopper reference. Jeremie tries to get Yumi and Ulrich. Yumi gets Ulrich while Ulrich sulks and they have an inane scene. On Lyoko, the Marabounta has blocked off a tower. That thing is almost as malicious as X.A.N.A.! The Marabounta is destroying the world and killing its native: Aelita. For this reason, I will hearby call it "Sunoco", the company responsible for the Dakota Access Pipeline. X.A.N.A. sends in a Krab, and Aelita subverts the Aelita options, and grabs the Krab like a dog humping a leg, because Kiwi isn't on Lyoko. Weirdly, the Krab saves her. So the monsters are slowing the sunoco down, but it's not enough. Aelita and Odd explain the matter to Yumi, who has bland dialog. In the increasingly irritating B plot, William shows up in Ulrich's room next. William explains that he's only a romantic interest because Ulrich and Yumi can't cut to the freaking point with eachother. I don't know if it's William being included, or him having an actual freaking point, but he's right. Incidentally, from the hallway, Ulrich's room probably looks like the plot to a bad vulgar piece of fanfiction. On the A plot, Jeremie decides to make a virus to kill the sunoco. This idea would be reused in season 4. Odd then rides a Krab to the heart of the sunoco to kill the core of it. Sidenote, it's a good thing that Jeremie is incompetent. If this thing were a real multiagent system, just killing one agent wouldn't do much. The scene of Odd riding a Krab is very silly. Somehow, Yumi gets eaten by the sentient tar. Ulrich arrives via the season 2 virtualization music, replacing her. Odd then kills the queen sphere at the last second, causing an explosion that wipes them all out. :Odd: See Aelita? This is why we all hate it when you only deactivate the tower at the last second! :Aelita: Odd, do not make me use the long single note of angry music. I haven't used it yet, and I'll have you saying "I can't hold on much longer". In the weirdest scene of the series, the monsters bow and leave. This makes no sense. Jeremie then reminds us of the status quo. The B plot is resolved by Yumi and Ulrich pretending it didn't happen. I agree. This episode would be better if the B plot didn't happen. Some Observations And Random Thoughts We found out later in the series that Franz Hopper created X.A.N.A., also a multiagent system. This has some implications. For example, later attacks targeted Jeremie more often. Was this because Jeremie demonstrated that he could create another X.A.N.A., which X.A.N.A. would perceive as a threat? This episode opens up questions. Did X.A.N.A. help to destroy the Marabounta because the Marabounta was the first serious threat to X.A.N.A.? It nearly destroyed a sector way before X.A.N.A. did, and a similar program nearly destroyed XANA in the penultimate episode of season 4. Why did the Marabounta target Aelita? We know the Virus theory is as full of shit as Donald Trump, so what's the real reason? Here's a theory: The Marabounta tried to kill Aelita for the same reason X.A.N.A. tried to destroy humanity many times: both were a threat. Humanity could destroy the supercomputer and kill X.A.N.A., so X.A.N.A.'s solution was to kill humanity. All of the monsters and Lyoko Warriors working together were only able to slow down the marabounta without insider knowledge from Jeremie, except for 1 warrior: Aeltia. Aelita's creativity could destroy the land that supported the Marabounta, killing it off. Aelita was the only threat, and the Marabounta wanted her dead. Mara Bounta would be a good name for a pathology themed drag queen. It's very interesting how the Marabounta is an allegory for X.A.N.A.. It goes rogue. This episode is much better to rewatch than to watch, because you know all of what went on with Franz Hopper, and you see the problems brewing. It's an interesting parallel story to Franz Hopper. In a quest to handle a great evil, a mentally unstable genius creates a hive minded AI, only for said hive minded AI to be a much greater threat, threatening Aelita's life. Sophie Decroisette used her knowledge of the series to create a great piece of art, and combined it with Bruno Regeste's ability to make something look great. Review Summary This episode does really well. The A plot is a great microcosm story of the backstory of Lyoko. The animation was good for its time and has aged ok. This was a truly menacing threat. At the same time, the A plot is absolutely crazy and a good departure from the status quo. If this episode were the average for how interesting Code Lyoko could get, rather than the 80th percentile, Moonscoop would have made so much money off of the show, it could churn out another 9 seasons of rip-offs and bad licensed cartoons before finally declaring bankruptcy. The only issue I can see is the B plot with Ulrich sulking. But this is realistic, so I can tolerate it. On top of that, the scene with William and Sissi is FABULOUS, bringing up the average. Overall, I give this episode 9.2 out of 10. It's not as good as Ghost Channel, but it has good character moments, an interesting story, good animation, strong rewatchability, and despite being a filler episode, fits season 2 overall like a jewel in a crown: Beauty within beauty. Bruno Regeste and Sophie Decroisette did a fabulous job. Thank you to anyone who enjoyed this review. Please consider donating to Foregen, in leu of subsidizing these reviews: foregen.org. Please comment on any thoughts on this review or the episode. Category:Blog posts Category:Marabounta